Epiphany/Book One/Chapter 1
Death Gone Into Hiding is the first chapter of Epiphany: Book One. The full chapter was released on September 17, 2015. Synopsis Two months after the initial outbreak, and eight years before the arrival of "Ash" at the town of Glenley, the congregation of Christ Community Church in Monroeville, Pennsylvania struggle with processing the plague. Meanwhile, a politician from Paducah, Kentucky named Gwen takes a more proactive approach to handling her city's safety. Appearances *Gray Bolio *Dylan Bolio *Liz Burke *Enid Bolio *Anthony Bolio *Gwen Temple *Declan Radke Death Gone Into Hiding “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien Thunder rumbled outside, igniting the cotton-candy-pink skies with a violet bolt. The twinkle in the boy’s eyes as he viewed this beautiful display in the stars showed that he was jubilant in its presence. He didn’t need to speak, only smile and revel in it. How beautiful, he thought. Even in all of this. '' Zoned out, the boy stared out the window of the church he called his second home, a place where he could sit down and keep his mind free of any pain. A rough day turned into a solemn, peaceful night playing board games with his youth group. It was always this way. The world is so broken, and even at his young age, he could see it and feel it. Only eleven years old, Gray Bolio was a young, cute kid. He had a rounded face topped off with a head of unkempt dirty blonde hair. His blue eyes were big and almond-shaped – like moons, orbiting people into his presence. He was very intelligent, quiet, and intense for his age. He was raised from an early age to be a man of God and was able to read, and make his own interpretations of, Bible verses in kindergarten. His reading ability, of course, impressed his public school teachers while his church family loved the boy’s wild and imaginative way of telling Bible stories in a way that captivated the other children. No one could ever forget the day that Gray organized an entire skit on the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. Gray had rewrote the entire thing in a rhyme scheme, which allowed his cast of younger children to easily catch on. Gray heard the whooping cough behind him of his friend Dominic. Dominic had fallen ill the day before while the boys were all out in the courtyard playing soccer, and his cough and fever were only getting worse as the night carried on. One of the ladies from the congregation, Suzanne, was a nurse and she sat at his side and helped him through it. She and Gray prayed for him at least three times over this period. Gray was honestly bored, though. He needed to release some energy. He said a solemn goodbye to his sick friend and left the room. A lot of people were getting sick in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and even the surrounding areas. That’s why most of the congregation of Christ Community Church banded together and took shelter in the church building after the plague hit. It had been about two months since everything turned upside down, but Gray didn’t mind. He loved being at the church, surrounded by his friends. No one inside had fallen ill, not until Dominic. Now Gray was starting to grow worried. He knew worrying would not do much good for Dominic or for himself – he had to just keep praying on it. But seeing the others in the congregation worrying too didn’t give Gray much support. Especially since outside contact has fallen to a new low. No local government contact has been made in a week. His brother was one of those who seemed so ambivalent, unaffected by the world around him. Gray knew that his brother felt something, maybe more than anyone else around them; he was just a lot better at hiding his feelings from the world around him. It was silly to Gray, but it was also something that he envied in his brother. Being emotional and an open book also meant Gray was decidedly vulnerable, which was definitely a trait he didn’t like in the first place. Trusting in his faith helped him with these issues a lot, giving him the grace and the strength – not his own, thankfully, he couldn’t run on that – to carry on with each passing day. Despite the odds, Gray felt he was able to handle the sudden quarantine very well. Throwing open the door to the spare room at the end of the hallway where his brother chose to set up “base camp”, Gray stopped himself from talking outright as he noticed his older brother Dylan was asleep on the sofa. Dylan transformed the room into his own mini man cave. He didn’t stay here, all of the families of Christ Community Church were required to sleep along with kin, but he made it his own. He didn’t give Gray much say in the decorating, so there was a lot of posters he brought from home of movies and TV and bands that Gray didn’t have much interest in associating with. Dylan was often very different from the rest of the church, he listened to music, and watched movies, and played games, that weren’t necessarily agreed with by the other members. But he didn’t care. Gray found it admirable, but it was the younger boy’s own personal choice to stay away from a lot of secular media. The boy smirked, an inkling of mischievousness overcoming him. He saw an opportunity here to get the jump on his older brother. A rarity for him. He just couldn’t resist. “DYLAN!” Gray shouted, giggling playfully as he watched his older teenaged brother, half-buried in the sofa, give a startled leap out of his complacent stupor. Internally groaning, the couch potato blinked a few times, his glazed brown eyes refocusing slowly. He arduously half-turned his head away from the TV and towards the kitchen, the movement causing his smooth brown hair to poke irritatingly at his face. “Whaaat?” he called back, his voice disinterested and slightly slurred. He blew a blast of air from his lips after this, flipping his hair back into its place and then giving an elongated sigh. Dylan Bolio was a messy cute fifteen year old whose insane behavior – often rambunctious, otherwise surprisingly serene and wise – changed depending on those around him and what they required of him to make a good impression. His ability to morph his personality based on others’ expectations made him seem braggadocious to those around him who were more mature and understood his desperation to be liked and accepted. Dylan was a smart kid with a lot of expectations from adults, who just wanted to relax and enjoy life by stretching out and taking it all in, instead of being wrapped up in, and stressed out by, what others wanted from his life. It was his life, after all. “Pastor Liz wants to talk to you,” Gray told Dylan. “You must be in trouble! I meant to tell you earlier, but I got caught up tending to Dominic, sorry.” “Oh,” Dylan grumbled. He stretched out with an additional groan. “Is Dom doing any better?” “Not really. You better hurry, Pastor Liz seemed like it was important.” “Not my fault you took your sweet ‘ol time getting the memo to me, messenger boy.” Dylan stood and hobbled his way for the door. “I noticed you missed out on training this morning. You never do.” “I got hurt yesterday,” Dylan said, shaking his limping leg in the process. “What? That’s crazy! How?” Gray asked. A sly smile crossed his face as he suppressed giggles. “Please don’t tell me you shot yourself! Or do, so I can keep laughing…” It was a known fact that Dylan was not a very good shot. “Hardy har har,” Dylan responded with the roll of his eyes. “I was helping Pastor Robin carry some logs for last night’s campfire and dropped one on my foot. Wanna see it?” With his hand on the ledge of the wall, Dylan lifted up his foot from the ground and shoved it in Gray’s face. The younger boy backed away quickly, looking disgusted. He hated feet. Nasty things. Dylan knew, and often took advantage of, this. He opened the door, turned back to Gray and said, “I’ll see you later. Thanks for playing mail man. That might end up as your destiny… gripping onto your full potential and becoming the next great UPS delivery guy! You’d rock those doo-doo shorts, kiddo!” Gray just laughed and waved goodbye to his brother. As Dylan left the room and made his way down the hallway, he started to think back. Gray was justified in his question. Their father Anthony was a retired Navy SEAL and raised his family to be a tough bunch. Anthony made them each wake up and train with him every morning. The series of workouts consisted of stretching, followed by an hour of some form of martial arts. After this, Dylan was taken away for more in-depth practices. Anthony shared many of his SEAL secrets with his eldest son. Stories were shared and lessons were learned, based on real life accounts from his own career on the field that scared Dylan in many ways at first. Some of the things he learned from his father were dark and morbid. However, it was all a strange reality that Anthony felt important to imprint on his son and Dylan was incredibly grateful for these opportunities: his bond with his father was stronger than ever because of these sessions. Even after their father left, the virus spread and the rest of the family relocated to their church for safety, Dylan still carried on the tradition of morning training. Dylan took the mantle of leading his family – blood related and otherwise – in combat training. It felt more necessary now than ever. He had taken on a lot more responsibility here at the church since the quarantine. Hence, his nap. At least, he felt it was justified. Anthony took his boys to the gun range three nights a week for a while; Dylan stopped, however. After being there for a few months and being unable to stay consistent in his firing, he grew weary of the constant failure. He, admittedly, did not take defeat very well. Gray was a brilliant shot though. He was not a physical little guy, it was obvious he would not follow in his father or brother’s athletic footsteps, but he dug up a skill in his time at the gun range. He could shoot anything – handguns, rifles, shotguns, you name it – and stay consistent after a few tries. Gray was the brains in the family, that’s for sure, and he’d always argue that being a good marksman was more of a brain workout than an athletic one. Dylan would agree, only for his own sake in that he was perfectly okay with admitting he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. But admitting defeat at a sport? He would never do that. Dylan was the fighter of the family. Anything physical, anything he could hit, kick, whack, or smash, he’d be first in line for it. Dylan was first enrolled in karate by his parents as a young kid, as a way to install the idea of discipline in his mind, but he was bored by the classes he took. Dylan wanted something more physical. While his mother was insistent on keeping the boy in karate, his father was able to convince her to put Dylan into a more intense sport to keep the boy’s interest. Dylan became proficient in combat sports, taking lessons on kickboxing with his father and being enrolled in professional classes to learn the Thailand art of Muay Thai. Eventually, he even enrolled in kenjutsu classes to learn how to become a swordsman. It was great experience, and Dylan felt like he took a lot from these classes. It was strange for Dylan to wrap his mind around his father’s unknown fate. After retiring from his military background, Anthony Bolio completed his schooling as an animal behaviorist, and traveled to Antarctica for research shortly before people started falling ill. They hadn’t heard from him since. It barely felt any different for Dylan, as he had already been gone for a few months before the virus hit. He was getting used to not having his dad around. Dylan felt it was sad to think this way, but it was only the honest truth. Whenever he did think about what his father was doing, though, there was now a looming sense of uncertainty about whether or not he was even alive. This made it easier for Dylan to block it out completely. It was almost as if he never existed. Dylan just didn’t want to think of the alternatives. If Gray knew about this, Dylan knew he’d be berated for this line of thinking. It was unhealthy, and he knew it. But he didn’t care, because it felt a lot better than wallowing in the could-haves ever did for Gray. The wandering Dylan’s mind was doing instantly stopped when he reached Pastor Liz’s office. The office was in its own contained room, glass windows surrounding it. It was the only room inside of the church that was like that, and people often teased that it fit Liz’s transparent personality. As soon as Dylan’s reflection hit the glass, Liz picked her head up and her eyes bore into his. She smiled, and nodded for him to open the door. Liz was a blonde, often letting her long, wavy hair hang down into a ponytail that hung over her left shoulder. She was a very particular woman. It was always the left shoulder. As the church’s youth pastor, it became custom for the children to make up crazy stories on why Liz liked her left shoulder so much. There was even the wild theory that she was a former spy and was covering up a scar on her left shoulder with her hair. The days when they could be careless and just talk about goofy stuff like that, those were the days Dylan missed sorely. “Gray take his time telling you?” she asked as Dylan stepped into her office. “Or did you just prolong yourself? Either way, I’m happy you’re here.” Dylan just smiled, and took a seat. “I see you’ve redecorated,” he said, poking at the funky looking lamp next to his seat. “Garage sale. You know I’m notoriously cheap. I wanted to talk about the high school youth group. Have you been praying on my request?” Dylan had an idea that this is what Pastor Liz would want to bring up. She asked him to put it on his heart about a week ago, and hadn’t brought it up since. Pastor Liz operated the youth group at the church with the help of a leader in the youth, and their last leader, Janelle, hadn’t showed up since quarantine. Liz thought it was time to find a replacement. The youth liked having that leader figure among them to go to in need, and she felt that Dylan had that presence and capability to do it. She also hoped it would bring about a leader in him by bearing responsibility on him, hoping to mature him in the process. “Yes,” he lied. Well, not really. Dylan hadn’t given it as much thought and prayer as he knew she would have liked. But he did pray on it once or twice… Okay, once. “I just don’t know if God’s spoken to me yet.” “I’m worried,” he continued. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle some of the people in the group. Keith annoys the crap out of me.” Dylan often had worries when ‘dealing’ with some of the other people in the youth group. He knew no one liked when he used the word phrase ‘dealing with them’, but that’s how it truly was for him. It was a frustrating tug of egos between him and another boy, Keith, the son of one of the church’s head pastors. Dylan understood that Keith would feel a sense of entitlement to lead the group, but when he was entrusted to do things, it aggravated him that Keith would always butt in. Sadly, Dylan wasn’t very good at handling and managing conflict, either. Sarcasm was his strong suit, not resolution. “Well,” Liz began. “That’s something you work out as you keep going. It will fall into its place. Sure. There may be a bit of conflict. But that’s something you need to approach and handle, like adults do. It’s a part of life. You’re not going to agree with everyone.” She saw him retract back into his angry shell as a frown crossed Dylan’s face. Liz always recognized the different tics of her students; whenever Dylan’s behavior was ever analyzed or critiqued, he would withdraw from the conversation in anger. Something he’d have to learn. But she had faith that he would. “Then we’ll leave this conversation like the last,” she said. “Pray on it, Dyl. You may be surprised by what you find.” ---- “Where were you when the world ended?” People on the coast of the Tennessee River, where Gwen Temple traveled up and down for the past two months, seemed to coin and love this new phrase. It was like the new generic greeting to add to their vocabulary. Forget “How’s the weather?” or “What’s your favorite color?”, this question was more prevalent and felt more robotic to answer than either of those questions ever did. Gwen hated it. Because for her, the world never ended. If anything, it had only just begun. Two months with no help. Two months of blood, sweat and tears being poured into this project. Two months of hell. But it was worth it. These were the best two months of Gwen Temple’s life. It was so strange for people to hear that. “You’re always so happy,” they’d say. Well, happy wasn’t the word for it. Seeing that there are people struggling, people dying, and people in desperate need for help – that didn’t make her happy. It inspired her. And inspiration made her feel more alive. That is how Gwen would describe these past few months. In these two months, she honestly felt like she’d learned more about human nature and helped more people than she did in the ten years she spent traveling the world as an anthropologist. Born into a wealthy family as the daughter of an esteemed American ambassador, Gwen traveled plenty in her youth. Her mother abandoned the family when Gwen was young, so her father was forced to bear the responsibility of raising a child and doing his job. This meant that Gwen was oftentimes left in the care of an adult who was not her parent - whether it’d be in the form of the nice secretary at daddy’s office, the maid, or a traveling au pair. Her relationship with her father was a very distant one; but she learned a lot by showing interest in what he did, and decided to follow in his footsteps. She was born in New Jersey, where home really was, but under her father’s care for the first eighteen years of her life, Gwen lived in various countries: Greece, Japan, France, Bolivia, Romania, and the Philippines. She took the first opportunity she could to move out on her own, graduating high school early and attending her freshman year of college shortly after that. Gwen, unsure of what path to take with her life, got her first degree in business. Unsatisfied, and with a drive to help other people, she returned to school and graduated with a degree in anthropology. Her desire to travel along with her warped image of stability and normalcy caused Gwen to grow bored and constantly move around, from school to school. She was never content anywhere. And then when she finally graduated, having gained over three hundred credit hours between her two degrees, she traveled the world once more; a wandering anthropologist with an empty mission and empty promises to change the world. Her turning point was ten years into her career as an anthropologist. While on a trip to Uganda, an extremist group gunned down a camp Gwen was staying in. She was injured, but was one of the few survivors. It was the most horrible thing. She could hear their screams echoing to this day; the gunshots still rat-a-tat-tat in her ears every so often. Gwen was strong though. At least that’s what she kept telling herself. She’d move past it. It’d been half a decade at this point. She still hadn’t. And that wasn’t for a lack of trying, either. Of course, after countless domestic jobs working under political leaders, just as she began to settle in as an aide to the governor of Kentucky, everything around her collapsed. Her perceived randomness in events of the world, however, delighted her. It challenged her. This was just the change she was so addicted to, but on another level. Gwen had heard word of a sickness spreading, of course, who hadn’t? But she never expected it to destroy everything. Government fell apart. Chaos reigned for two weeks. City hall was overrun quickly and Gwen had to make a quick escape, accepting the fact that the job she was settling into was now not worth it anymore. She had to book it and save herself. She moved closer to the Kentucky-Tennessee border, traveling on her own and settling in Paducah. But now things seemed to be calming down. Maybe. But she knew she couldn’t just sit around and wait for help. She had plans. Gwen was scoping the Tennessee River and the communities and towns surrounding it on her lonesome. Her plan required a lot of people, and in Paducah, Kentucky, where she was now stationing herself, she had finally gathered quite a bit. The infected people, the sick, the dead, ''whatever you wanted to call them – they wandered the streets, but for the most part, Paducah had secured everything. She just wanted to find a way to make sure they’d never be a problem again. Flooding the ground level seemed like the best option. Building high, living up high, a city in the sky… That was her solution. The rest of the council in Paducah said it was crazy to go out alone, but Gwen didn’t want to risk losing more than just one. She was more than capable of handling herself. She wasn’t scared of anyone, not after what she saw in Uganda. Besides, a large group would just intimidate people, and with blue eyes, blonde hair, and square-jawed, Gwen had the appearance of someone who exude beauty and power. She was confident that she alone could draw people in. Gwen was admittedly also not a very easy person to work with; she was better off alone. Her lack of outward fear made it easy to face these things. She was able to keep a lot calmer than most. The infected started out with just a fever, but then it changed them. They morphed into something violent, turning the sick into mindless and furious cannibals. And it was always inconsistent, so no one could ever really take one and study them. She knew a colleague who was sick for days before changing, and then witnessed someone change minutes after infection. There was an unpredictability to this pandemic that made it truly terrifying. Just examining the destruction it left behind in its wake, just thinking that two months ago, these homes were populated and life actually existed here, made Gwen’s journey through the coastal towns so much more painful. The people she did meet were not exactly willing to come along. They thought her idea was crazy. That she was a bit loopy. Gwen admitted that it sounded crazy, but she knew it would work. She had enough confidence and trust in herself to know that it would work. As she maneuvered the streets of what once was the small town of Grand Rivers, Gwen noticed a few wandering infected. Their skin pale and sickly, eyes yellowed and flesh hanging from their lips, it was unmistakable. Gwen grabbed for the gun latched to her hip, and gripped it tightly. In the other hand, she drew her trusty knife. This thing had gotten her through plenty of situations. It was always best to use silent weapons. It seemed as if the infected were blind based on her observations of their previous behavior, but she knew that these things followed noises quite well. So a gunshot would draw more to her presence, and just cause an even bigger mess. Stealthily, she snuck up behind the first one and jammed her knife into the back of its skull. She yanked the knife out and it dropped like bricks. The other two in the vicinity heard the drop of their comrade, but didn’t seem to care either way. Their faces turned in Gwen’s direction, but they didn’t run. They seemed to try picking up a scent. It was a good thing that Gwen covered herself in mud beforehand. That seemed to be a good way of hiding the natural aroma of tasty human flesh. Gwen crept around the creatures, moving slowly. They suddenly started to follow. Like unintelligent puppies, they circled the area and followed in her direction. Damn it, she thought. They can hear my footsteps. The biology of these things intrigued Gwen. She wanted to know how they worked. How they were created was a whole other can of worms, but she had heard so many theories in these first two months about government conspiracies and the like that at this point it was hardly a care to her. She had just accepted that this is the world now and it was time to adapt. Others weren’t as quick to do that as she was. And that was why, at least in her opinion, they didn’t last very long. The minute her vision of New Venice was finally a reality, she wanted to open up one of these things and examine them. New Venice, the name just popped into Gwen’s head. She smiled to herself. I really like the sound of that. '' As if this thought propelled her, Gwen leapt forward, swinging her knife at the first, right into the bridge of its nose. The second converged on her, and she kicked it in the chest. It stumbled back, into the other one. They both gave an annoyed grumble. ''It’s almost as if these things still have a glimpse of a personality! Two more slices and they were down for the count. Gwen backed up, then knelt down. She ripped off a piece of one’s shirt, using it to wipe her blade clean. Then, she carried on. A sad feeling overcame her again as she realized that this was yet another ghost town. “Finally,” a voice interrupted that thought. “Someone that won’t respond with just snapping teeth when I call them a ‘bitch’!” Gwen spun around, taken aback. Behind her stood a man, wearing a grim smile on his lips, with a rifle thrown over his shoulder. He stood about six foot, with dark, clean cut hair, and a rugged, built and handsome mien to him. “I wouldn’t bet on that, I have a pretty nasty bite myself,” she responded. “You got a name, stranger?” “You’re in my territory. You should be introducing yourself to me… stranger.” “You find a face to talk to and you greet me with paranoia?” Gwen teased. “No wonder you have no friends around here.” She could see by his face and by the way he toyed with his rifle that playtime was over. Gwen’s face fell into a grimace as she finally answered with, “I’m Gwen.” “Declan Radke,” the man said. “Sorry for the paranoia and all, but there aren’t very many friendly faces out here these days. What brings you to, uh…” He glanced around, his eyes focusing on a banner with the town’s name that hung from a lamppost above them. “…good ol’ Grand Rivers?” “A dream and a purpose,” Gwen said confidently. “What brought you? You don’t seem like a local.” “Caught me,” Declan beamed. “What gave it away? That I had to look around and find my bearings?” “Well that, and your big ol’ gun,” Gwen said. “The folks here in Grand Rivers are notoriously liberal. The advocacy for gun control was pretty big here a couple years back…” “Is that why they’re all dead?” “Poor taste.” “Sorry,” Declan mumbled. “What kind of dreams you’ve been having that brought you downriver?” “Hoping that I’d find more people,” Gwen explained. “I have a project I’m working on. I need all the people I can get. I have about a thousand back home in Paducah. That’s about all that’s left. After two months, two-thirds of the population is just wiped out. Unbelievable.” “Yeah,” was all Declan had to say. “I have gotten a lot of no's. I’m hoping you want to come with. Not really leaving much behind, are you?” “So you’re not one of them, huh? Should’ve known, since you’re not head-to-toe in green…” “One of who?” “We'll make chit-chat later, it’s not smart of us to be out in the open, so if we’re gonna go, we’re gonna have to head out like now. But I do have something to put out there, just for the record, if you really do want me to join you…” Growing impatient, Gwen interjected with a sigh, “Then spit it out.” Declan sighed. Gwen could tell this was something that he wasn’t necessarily proud of, based on the hesitancy on his face. “I’m kind of a murderer.” Category:Epiphany Category:Issues Category:Epiphany Issues Category:Pilots